A HUALAPAI BOUNDARY CASE

THE HUALAPAI AND THE PARK SERVICE

A RIVER-RELATED COURT CASE 

In early ’90’s, a personal injury case arose out of a boating incident in the Grand Canyon. Down river from Diamond Creek, a Hualapai motor-driven raft was turned in so tight, fast a curve that a man was thrown out and then cut badly when the motor ran over him.

Crucially, the National Park Service claimed it had no responsibility in this matter, even though the National Park includes the entire river from the Paria junction to river mile 277. Indeed in the District Judge’s decision, it was (falsely) stated that the incident occurred within the Hualapai Reservation that started at Diamond Creek! 

Furthermore, NPS claimed the Hualapai were not regulated in their river operation by the GCNP administration, and therefore NPS did not even have a responsibility to warn or inform users of the Hualapai operation that NPS had nothing to do with Hualapai boating. 

At this time, GCNP boating was regulated under a Colorado River Management Plan. If the NPS statement is correct, then that Plan did not cover operations below Diamond Creek. The CRMP was not mentioned in the decision, so it did not appear whether it did in fact include permits or other official actions to regulate Hualapai operations, even though in fact, the entire river from the Paria to r.m. 277 is inside the Park as legislated in the 1975 Grand Canyon Natiional Park Enlargement Act.

This lapse in NPS administration, if it did in fact exist, was remedied during the late-’90’s superintendency of R. Arnberger, who went so far as to sign, in 2000, along with the Hualapai and Lake Mead NRA, a memorandum of agreement in which the parties set aside boundary issues in order to be able to discuss matters arising from matters of joint interest dealing with boating operations. These discussions involved the highest and all appropriate personnel in a Core Group that met twice a year. (It lasted five years.)

Returning to the court case, both the district judge and the 9th Circuit Appeals Court accepted the NPS argument of having no responsibility and rejected the injured party’s claim. 

Clearly, the government was in error about NPS jurisdiction over the river, since the entire 277-mile stretch of the Colorado River is in the Grand Canyon and its Park. The government claimed that it did not concern itself with the last 40 miles of the river in the Park because the Hualapai disputed that ownership. This is sophistry at best, since the Hualapai were not claiming jurisdiction over river craft operation navigating the River, which was under the 1975 Act NPS’s responsibility.

Indeed, GCNP officials had laid claim  starting in 1975 not just to the river, but the river  the land up to the “historic highwater mark”.

The question of NPS and Hualapai relations over the river may have involved disagreements about various matters (thus the Core Group), but such matters had been brought up and discussed at least since the 1960’s, and NPS was well aware of the various attempts of the Hualapai to use river boating to raise revenue for the tribal treasury. None of this was evidenced in the judicial decisions. As mentioned, the CRMP did not appear in the case either (there actually had been two previous versions), so it is not clear whether those highly important river administration documents dealt at all with the Hualapai. If they did not, this would be further evidence off NPS failure to properly administer navigation of the river in the Park.

In conclusion, it appears that justice was not served in this case with its errors and NPS failure to exercise its jurisdiction over the river in accordance with the law.

The Grand Canyon's Second Odd Couple

 

JOHN MUIR AND GIFFORD PINCHOT: 

LOVING THE GRAND CANYON AND LETTING THE PUBLIC IN ON IT

One strange aspect of the Powell-Harrison alliance to advance the idea of a Grand Canyon National Park (1882-1893) is how little public notice or activity there was. No speeches, no articles, no letter campaign. Whether this is due to a lack of historical research or whether the two just had many other issues on their minds, I wish I knew. 

If this existence out of the public eye seems true for the 1880’s, it certainly changed in the next decade, the 1890’s, featuring our second odd couple: John Muir and Gifford Pinchot. Visitation was starting to grow, and the railroad was coming, thus increasing the potential for public interest hugely, but these two epitomize pushing the Park idea and effort into public view. And  without seeming to take account of the Powell-Harrison effort. 

The Grand Canyon's First Superhero Duo

SOMETIMES IT TAKES TWO

The early legislative/political history of the Grand Canyon is indebted to some of the giants of our West: John Wesley Powell, of course, but also Gifford Pinchot and John Muir.

Because of destroyed archives, Powell’s collaboration with Benjamin Harrison over the Canyon has been largely lost. Their efforts were in 1882-5 and 1893, while the Muir-Pinchot efforts came later, in the 1890’s. 

This post covers the earlier, first, Powell-Harrison effort; a second will review Muir-Pinchot.

John Wesley Powell — The Procreator Of The Park

Walking the Walk...You Do Best With A Map

 Pete McBride’s The Grand Canyon: Between River and Rim is a book of 1-2 page spreads and many intimate close-ups, 236 pages celebrating Canyon views photographed during whats called a “Grand Canyon traverse”, that is, a combination of hikes/backpacks where the protagonists start at the junction with the Paria River and walk the length of the Canyon, coming out at Lake Mead. (The Canyon and its National Park differ in their, in the first instance, topographic boundary, and in the second, politically constituted line.) 

draft -- UNM PROFESSOR KARL KARLSTROM ON THE GRAND CANYON'S AGE -- draft

THE WEST END: DOES ITS YOUTH SETTLE AN OLD CONTROVERSY?

Following the paper trail of University of New Mexico Professor Karl E Karlstrom led me to some recent work that highlights the singular importance of the western Grand Canyon in wrestling with that most important of Grand Canyon chesnuts: How old is it? When did it take shape? Is it one big dig or a collection of ditches? 1964 saw elder geology statesman, E. McKee, take a lead in a significant symposium. Sixty years later, Dr. Karlstrom, an intimate and expert researcher and analyst of the Canyon, is leading the debate in marshaling the evidence for a young Canyon, and using, which is what interests me, data from the western end.

 The least-publicly known is the youngest geologically? Fascinating! There are several papers for the brave curious to search out. I have freely, but I hope not stupidly, cut and pasted pieces in order to focus in on the importance of the western end of the Grand Canyon as its youngest section and thus determiner of "how old" the Canyon is.

A Grand Canyon Golden Anniversary Is Approaching

A FABULOUS GRAND CANYON DOUBLE-50TH ANNIVERSARY

January 3 1975. President Ford puts his signature on Public Law 93-620 and at a stroke doubles the Grand Canyon National Park, extending it to include the Grand Canyon's entire length from the Paria River junction through mile 277 to its western end at the Grand Wash Cliffs, marked by a Paiute Butte on the north, and a Hualapai on the south.

Simultaneously, that Law repatriated to the Havasupai, millenial residents of the Grand Canyon, 195,000 acres of its ancestral lands, while securing their traditional rights to 100,000 more such acres in the adjacent National Park.

Here is a representation of the official map of P.L. 93-620. It shows the Park being extended upstream to the Paria, and downstream from the 1932 Monument. On the south, in the center, the cross-hatching shows the Havasuapai lands, repatriated and traditional use.

This was a huge step toward the recognition of the Greater Grand Canyon that reached another climax in 2023 when President Biden proclaimed Baaj Nwaavjo I'tah Kukveni National Monument in conjunction with the Associated Tribes of the Grand Canyon: Hopi, Havasupai, Hualapai, Southern Paiute, Navajo, Zuni, Yavapai-Apache.

This Golden Anniversary pre-eminently deserves to be celebrated for righting the century-old Havasupai dispossession while educating the American nation to the rights, and a major, long grievous wrong done to one of the First Peoples of our continent.

During the 1972-75 legislative effort -- right up to the day of Ford's action--, the Havasupai struggle had to continue -- a struggle I have personal knowledge of and experience in. Over the decades since, the Havasupai have made clear (at least to me, a Park defender) the correctness of finally recognizing in national law their ancestral homeland as their permanent property.

Moreover, that 1975 action finalized a signficant turning point in our continuing great national environmental endeavor: to shift our views and actions about how to live on, not just the Greater Grand Canyon, but the entire Earth; -- this planet that even today we cannot bring ourselves whole-heartedly and whole-headedly (much less with our whole pocketbook) to protect from the ravages of human civilizing activities culminating in our times in the intensifying unpredictability and variation in the world-wide climate.

Exploring how the Grand Canyon ends

draft - EXPLORING HOW THE GRAND CANYON ENDS - draft

From the Westernmost High Point, the view sweeps down and out, over the Sanup Plateau, reaching its farther edge some seven miles west where it drops 3500' in 1 1/2 - 2 miles to the water surface (of the reservoir or river, depending). That drop is a geological lesson, as shown in this piece of the 1982 edition of the stupendous, irreplaceable map done in the 1970's by Peter Huntoon and George Billingsley. (For orientation, keep track of that triangular flat in the middle at the top.)